A Customer Service Nightmare

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization that pursued the expansion of generic top-level domains last year, is trying to play nice with customers in the face of a potential PR disaster. Many applicants were upset because of a weeks-long delay in the proposal-taking process that was caused largely by a security breach, exposing private data such as information about what suffixes certain companies were proposing. ICANN is offering refunds to the spurned spenders, who shelled out $185,000 each. Until recently, these applicants were able to withdraw from bids for a partial refund, but now they can have all of their money returned as long as they withdraw before the deadline — which had yet to be determined at the time of ICANN’s offer.